


neither are you free to desist

by fluffernutter8



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Light Angst, Married Couple, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29525652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Undercover work wears more than expected.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	neither are you free to desist

She has already been there for hours, watching the square below from behind the gauzy curtain, before he finally arrives, exactly when she expected him. His head is bent a bit against the dreary drizzle, the collar of his jacket up, that same worn-out one he’s had for too many years and refuses to get rid of.

Although she does not close her eyes, Peggy can picture him ducking into the lobby, taking the stairs two at a time, walking down the hallway. She’s timed it to perfection; she knows she will hear the sound of the key sliding into the lock the second before she does.

Steve closes the door behind himself and bolts it again before turning to see her sitting in the armchair by the window, only the gray light from outside illuminating her.

With the pistol in her hand, she gestures for him to strip.

Voice low, he says, “Well geez, if you don’t like what I’m wearing, I can go and change.” The attempted humor of his comment is practically lost in the rustling as he removes his clothes, just as he had wanted it to be. She’s already placed the bag Stark provided just by the door. It is a bit of a tight fit for him to add his items to it on top of hers, but it will be worth it; their trackers are already being fed inaccurate data, and now the bag will ensure that any bugs they might have accidentally been carrying will simply pick up a loop of ambient noise. 

She takes a moment to admire him as he pulls on a new pair of jeans and the plain black sweater waiting for him. Recalling him in the privacy of her mind over these last months is nothing to the reality of him in front of her, the tease of his pale skin disappearing beneath the dark material, those light freckles whose placement she’s memorized, the settled grace of his movements as he takes a seat at the table.

Standing, she moves to sit opposite him, placing her gun on the tabletop. She always keeps it close now. Usually it is just in case. Sometimes it has not been.

The two of them reach out at the same moment so that she can cover his fingers with hers. It is nearly painful to pull away, to stop herself from savoring the contact - after all this time, someone good and gentle, whose goodness she can count on, someone who loves her, who knows her.

But they have business first.

“What have you found?” she asks, and at least that is some relief, hearing her own voice stripped of the husky New York accent she’s had to use for so long now. Sometimes she talks like that in her dreams and wakes with her lungs heavy and heart trembling.

When he begins to fill her in, he leans forward, keeps his words quiet despite the precautions they’ve taken. Everything is precaution these days. They’ve been able to reach out occasionally since she went under, information drops and burner phones carefully coordinated, but nothing like this. She once relied without thought on being able to listen to him speak at length, having the chance to ask him questions and immediately hear the answers, getting the whole picture. One day she hopes to be able to rely on it again.

If they’re right, that day might even be soon.

Their story has never been easy or conventional. It was unusual for two operatives in the Organization to be allowed not only to fall in love but to actually get married. The official word was that it was permitted because their work rarely intersected; that was true enough, but it was more truthful to say that they were two of the best and no one wanted to lose them.

As soon as Steve and Peggy had come to understand the rot which was creeping in all around them, they lost them anyway. Very few had been allowed to realize it yet. Steve still arrives for work on time every day, after all, only walks past formerly trusted colleagues who he knows to be dirty instead of reporting them. Peggy’s death had been extremely well-faked, her cover airtight as she integrated herself into the group which had been infiltrating for so long right beneath their noses.

She has been extremely effective at it. They knew that she would be, just as they knew that Steve would not have been able to manage it. Instead, he’s been invaluable at gathering information and subtly fighting back from within the Organization where possible. She knew parts of his success even before he had the chance to tell her all that he’s found.

She listens to him closely, committing it all to memory, but a part of her mind is focused on the hardness which he hears beneath his words. She wonders whether it was something she had not remembered, or if it was new. She had thought that she might come back to him as a stranger. Somehow she had not wondered if he might become so.

When it is her turn, she speaks for even longer than he did. His eyes do not leave her face the entire time, even through the worst of it, when she cannot pretend that the things she is speaking of happened to someone else, that she wasn’t there as a witness, or sometimes more. And despite the ways he is different from her memory of him, his regard of her is somehow unchanged. She does not feel judged. She already feels the strain of returning to a world without that gaze of his, which sees her so clearly and refuses to allow her to escape her own value in its light.

After she has finished too, they determine their next steps and she can feel how close they are, how soon they might end this all at last, just as she knows how much still depends on her, that she will have to leave this place and return to being someone else once again. And then there is no more to say. She wonders if she should shake his hand, congratulate him, say something bolstering before he has to go.

He speaks instead. “I miss you,” he tells her. “Our home is too empty without you in it.”

She would never have thought it would be anything that she would doubt. He loves her and she knows it as surely as she knows the ground beneath her feet. But still, to hear it, sweet and simple fact, after all these months of doubting everything, of having only her own hands to rely on and no safe place but her own mind, and even of beginning to doubt that...Pressing herself into his arms, reaching up and kissing him is instinct, one she thought left too far behind.

But she hasn’t, because she knows the soft strength of him when he holds her, remembers the feeling of his body stretched lean and solid against hers. Here is the taste of him against her mouth, and there is the tiny, three-stitch patch of raised flesh her fingers unthinkingly find on his back, and now the frantic, lovely pulse of his heart, beating its way toward hers.

The apartment has a bed, a twin with a metal frame. She had noted it when she arrived without even being conscious of doing so; it’s what her brain does now, seeks out weapons and escape routes and potential traps. She had never thought to use the bed for any more conventional purpose, but she is standing here and so is her husband and they will need to leave each other again soon.

His hands remember her just as easily as hers do him.

Afterward, they are glad for the small space as they hold each other close. His fingers seem to want to touch each strand as he runs them through her hair. He does not comment about the choppy cut or the dye job she has been renewing herself, the contact lenses she has not removed the entire time; these are not the things he recognizes about her, anyway.

“I miss you as well. So very much,” she says against his throat, and just the words are danger. When you let yourself realize that you are tired, the race is half lost, and there is still too much left to go.

But he does not admonish her for it, does not pull away and leave her without his warmth. “Then let’s finish it,” he says instead, “so we can come back to each other.”

Their time together is running short. There is more difficult work, more terrible work, to be done before they can meet again. But it’s important to gather strength for that, too, and so she allows herself the chance to close her eyes and rest against him and truly sleep, just for this brief now.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a setting + dialogue prompt on tumblr: Seeing each other for the first time in a while/“Well geez, if you don’t like what I’m wearing, I can go and change.”


End file.
